The standard ordering for lists of nodes and or entities in Drupal is first by the "sticky" attribute and then by the created date. Many content modules have some facility to change this ordering, but only for their content type. The modules described here attempt to provide a more controllable ordering in a variety of ways.

Outline Designer

The Outline Designer is an enhancement to the core-optional books module packaged with Drupal. It provides a drastically improved UI as well as additional functionality that can help books be a more attractive, simple option then fully configuring other projects. This in use with projects like Menu Block can help you structure site outlines and node hierarchies rapidly. This project has been created as part of the ELMS initiative.

For more info please see the Outline Designer project page.

Weight

The Weight module uses the "sticky" attribute by altering its value to include the node's weight. This has the advantage of making the standard node ordering automatic with no further changes. The disadvantage is that modules that check the sticky attribute for 0 or 1 (FALSE or TRUE) may not work properly, although the module will decode the two values upon a full node load.

The drupal 8 version of the module provides a weight field that can be added to any fieldable entity. The weight field can be used to provide customized sorting.

For more info please see the Weight project page.

Nodeorder

Using taxonomy, individual nodes can be classified multiple ways. See
Taxonomy: A way to organize content for a comprehensive description. To continue the analogy from there, Nodeorder allows you to say that "this node should appear towards the top of the list of composers but towards the bottom of the list of seventeenth century."

Upon installation, Nodeorder adds a column called weight_in_tid to the term_node table. On each Vocabulary's edit page, Nodeorder adds an "Orderable" checkbox. If this is checked, users with the correct permissions will be able to order nodes within any of the terms in that vocabulary.

For more info please see the Nodeorder project page.

Nodequeue

Provides a simple UI to manually order any queue. Additionally, it allows nodes to be added and removed from queues without needing edit permissions to the node. Nodes can be added to queues either from a queue management tab or by links on the node teaser. Nodequeue provides a robust Smartqueue API so module developers can create customized queues that are specific to particular users, or to Organic Groups.

For more info please see the Nodequeue project page

Entityqueue

A rewrite of Nodequeue for Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 based on entities.

The Entityqueue module allows users to create queues of any entity type. Each queue is implemented as an Entityreference field, that can hold a single entity type.
For instance you can create a queue of:
* Nodes
* Users
* Taxonomy Terms
Entityqueue provides Views integration, by adding an Entityqueue relationship to
your view, and adding a sort for Entityqueue position.

See also Entityqueue project page

DraggableViews

Rows of a table or an HTML list can be moved via drag-and-drop to build hierarchical structures. Child nodes of parents can be hidden via javascript .

The default implementation uses a database table to save the information.

For more info please see the DraggableViews project page.

Flag Weights

This module has very few users.

Flag Weights module is an add-on to the excellent Flag module, that adds the ability to set a weight against each flagged item. The module does not provide any UI as such, other than integrating with Draggable Views module to allow drag'n'drop reordering or flagged content. This might be used for prioritising a wishlist, etc.

For more info please see the Flag Weights project page.

Sortable Grid Views Plugin

This module is no longer supported.

Provides a simple UI to manually order any grid styled view where items can be moved via drag-and-drop. Sortable Grid Views Plugin is very similar in its goals to Draggable views, yet a lot simpler as there is no hierarchy management. It doesn't depend on Draggable Views though.

For more info please see the Sortable Grid Views Plugin project page

JQGRID - View integration

This module has very few users.

This module provides views integration for the jqGRid jQuery plugin, which provides advanced interaction controls to HTML tables such as dynamic pagination, on-the-fly filtering, and column sorting and inline editing

This module also support AJAX to handle very large table.

For more info please see the JQGRID - View integration

Nodeflow

This module seeks new maintainers.

This module provides:

  1. Birds-eye view of all nodes published on your frontpage and all nodes waiting to be published giving editors complete control
  2. Drag and drop interface to sort nodes
  3. Drag and drop interface between tables to quickly publish nodes
  4. Locking selected nodes into selected positions
  5. Schedule nodes to be published in the future within the same interface.
  6. Shows all users currently online on the page.

For more info please see the Nodeflow

Scroll down for a table comparing some of the modules (added blank space because the table was covered by the Site Building Guide block/menu on the right).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drupal-related comparison

Feature Outline Designer Weight Nodeorder Nodequeue Entityqueue DraggableViews
Drupal 8.x beta
Drupal 7.x
Drupal 6.x
Last official release (as of July 2018) 2016-Jun-07 2015-Dec-09 2018-May-02 2016-Jun-14 2018-Mar-09 2016-Oct-21
Usage (as of July 2018) ~1000 ~46000 ~4100 ~42000 ~12000 ~61000
Documentation Handbook Handbook README.txt Handbook No - or see nodequeue Handbook
Demonstration Video No No Video No Video (D7)
Video (D8)
Architecture Upgrades Book outline interface Sticky-encoding Adds a field to term_node table ? ? Views style plugin
Additional database tables 0 - purely usability / functionality upgrade 2 - weight_settings & weight_weights 0 - adds a field to term_node table Yes Yes 1 - used for none FieldAPI implemenation

Services provided

Feature Outline Designer Weight Nodeorder Nodequeue Entityqueue DraggableViews
Reordering page Drag and drop, duplication of book outlines, AJAX version of book module, context menu Uses core node admin page / Drag and drop Drag and drop Drag and drop Drag and drop Any view
Feature blocks Inherited from book module N/A None Inherited from views
Supports Managing Translated Nodes ? ? ? Yes, either by tying translations to the original or by ignoring translations and letting admins manage them as separate nodes Yes, either by tying translations to the original or by ignoring translations and letting admins manage them as separate nodes ?
Security Drupal core-optional books module Drupal core, 'assign node weight', 'administer nodes', 'administer site configuration' Drupal core Separates permissions for ordering nodes from editing them Separates permissions for ordering nodes from editing them Views permission, plus 'Allow Reordering'
Settings Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Views support
Translation template supplied

Comments

hansfn’s picture

Maybe it's worth while to mention Views in the introduction? You can use Views to order nodes (by any parameter). I could have added something myself, but I haven't used any of the node ordering modules so I can't really compare them with Views ...

Happy Drupaling!

Renee S’s picture

Also one-to-many relationships. Anything relying on book can only be in a hierarchy once. Nodequeue, for instance, allows nodes to be in multiple hierarchies.

MrPaulDriver’s picture

I have just finished a project using the Sortable Grid views plugin and report back that it is very good indeed.

An example use case would be for sorting a grid of gallery images, but it is much more flexible than this.

My client was turned off by Draggable Views because he needs to sort very long lists of nodes. With the Sortable Grid, this was made very easy because the user in not endlessly scrolling up and down to sort a view.

Currently there are some minor issues which need resolving, but potentially the Sortable Grid could be a very worthy alternative to Draggable Views. To this end I am sure the maintainer would welcome some development help to make it even better.

Take a look

---
Paul Driver
www.easable.uk
Ilkley, West Yorkshire, UK

zekeweeks’s picture

The sidebar is blocking the ability to read the most important table for this node. I'd normally fix this by giving the table a maximum width and overflow: auto; styles, but can't do it with the filtered HTML rules applied to the body field. I'm not sure about the best way to address the problem - I hesitate to move the table far down the page past the sidebar, since it's such important information.